Since Robin Horbury hasn’t gotten around to posting about this, I’ll bring it up. Richard Black recently expressed his dismay that an individual country can block UN resolutions regarding climate change. Specifically, he’s worried about yet another failed Warmist Synod outcome from the upcoming Rio Summit in June.Of course, being a cleverly-trained writer, he presents this as a question and not an outright statement.

In a nutshell: does the way humanity governs itself need a series of tweaks or a complete overhaul, in order to meet the broadest ambitions of improving the lot of the planet’s poorest, safeguarding nature and making the global economy more sustainable?

And people wonder why some of us say that Warmists have totalitarian tendencies. All your national sovereignty are belong to us.

Now, I’m a fan of science fiction, especially Star Trek, and am not automatically opposed to the idea, in the abstract, of a single united government for a planet. I grew up with my imagination filled by the likes of the United Federation of Planets. Nearly every single plant our heroes visited each week was ruled by a single government, and those which didn’t had conflict which needed to be solved by the benevolent guiding hand. Even planets at war with each other had single governments which simply needed to be brought together. It would be lovely if it were reality. But what these people want isn’t an abstract idea at all. And our world is nothing like these harmonious fantasies.Rather, the Earth System Government Project, Black informs us, has spent a decade pondering whether or not we need a single government entity for the entire planet. He mentions how long they’ve been at it because that’s supposed to tell us they’re really serious about it, and whatever result they’ve come to can have resulted only from very long and serious study. So he sets it up as an appeal to authority straight away, to head off any doubts before they happen.

Before I get to the study, though, let’s take a moment to see if there’s any coincidence that he just happens to be talking about this issue now. But of course there is. Next week, he’ll be moderating a panel – “Innovative solutions for a planet under pressure” – at the “Planet Under Pressure” conference in London. Remember the word “innovative” for later. I do hope he’s not getting paid to promote this political agenda. Have a look at the speaker/panelist list, and notice a couple of names from the ESGP’s steering committee, as well as one of their lead faculty members. It’s a small world in this field, I know.

To show how serious they are, they’ve come up with a seven-point plan. Five of them are the usual stuff, using typical language we’ve come to expect, albeit slightly gilded for effect: reform the UN’s environmental agencies (I can think of other agencies they should do first), “deploy innovative technologies”, “support developing countries to ensure fairness” (that’s wealth redistribution when it’s at home), “reflect sustainability concerns” and so on. But Nos. 5 and 6 should give us all pause:

5. introduce qualified majority voting when making international decisions on environment and sustainability6. strengthen the voices of citizens as opposed to bureaucrats in global decision-making

And there you have it. Let the majority override national sovereignty on desired issues, and give activists more power to control the agenda. Black then lays it out for us.

Some of these are already being addressed in the Rio process, especially the first two; although their CSD proposal contains the innovative element of adjusting the weight given to each country’s representation so that the G20 grouping accounts for 50% of the votes.

Note the positive qualifier, “innovative”. Could this be one of the “innovate solutions” discussed in that panel he’ll be moderating next week? According to the website of one of the organizations behind the whole event, Earth System Science Partnership, the conference “will provide scientific leadership towards the 2012 UN conference on Sustainable Development – Rio +20.” The very conference Black talks about here. So it’s all very much on his mind these days.

This might appear undemocratic; but actually it would ensure the voting reflects the size of countries’ populations more accurately than it does now, though also skewing things towards the rich.

It might appear undemocratic, but it seriously appears to do away with national sovereignty. This seems not to trouble Black at all.

The most radical idea in procedural terms is introducing majority voting in UN fora to prevent a few recalcitrant nations from blocking the will of the vast majority.

There have been many times in the past when just one or two countries held up progress in UN processes such as the climate change convention – and the same issue is now being raised within the EU, where last week Poland on its own managed to block the setting of tougher carbon emission targets.

You don’t want other countries to force you to alter your own domestic policies? Screw you.

On the other hand, some countries’ protests clearly matter more than others.

Guess who the big bad guy is in this story:

Whereas the 2007 UN climate summit in Bali hinged on whether the US would block the will of every other country on the planet – it eventually chose not to – the objections of Bolivia at the equivalent meeting in 2010 were basically ignored by everyone else, who decided in that case that a consensus could leave one nation out.

The horrible US – when Bush was President, naturally – ruined it for everyone back in 2007, while later on poor Bolivia had their own national sovereignty trampled upon in the name of consensus. Yet Black sees the former as a bad thing, and the latter as a good precedent.

As so often in environmental and sustainability circles, the plan contains no shortage of ideas on what should be done, and why, and by when.

The politics of how to make it all happen are a different matter.

In this case, how to get economic bodies to put Rio+20 notions at the centre of their decision-making, how to persuade governments to give up their right of veto, how to project the concerns of citizens through the blockage of bureaucracy – these aren’t in the prescription.

Black is writing this whole thing from the perspective that this is a desirable goal. His personal bias on the so-called climate change issue leads him to view national sovereignty as an obstacle which needs to be overcome. Citizens (read: activists) must be able to control the agenda.

(By the way, can anyone else think of certain other UN resolution votes which might be affected by this process? )

Here’s a thought: why not let them go out and get elected like everyone else, Richard? Or is that not the kind of democracy you’re looking for? Just like the BBC’s darling Occupiers, he defines “democracy” as shouting loud enough to get his way. This is a totalitarian agenda, being pushed by a highly-paid, high-profile, BBC journalist. At your expense.

Putting the BBC in charge of a project to arbitrate the accuracy of weather forecasting organisations in the UK is a bit like Josef Mengele running research into the science of eugenics. They (from the Trustees down) long since made their collective mind up that man-made global warming is definitely happening, and that the warmist fanatics at the Meteorological Office are therefore to be believed in their fantasist modelling. Nevetheless, Roger Harrabin persuaded his bosses to shell out a bucket-load of our cash on such a project, no doubt spurred on by the corporate missionary zeal to prove wrong the hated “denialists” who dare to question warmist weather orthodoxy. Last month, as the linked report shows, Mr Harrabin announced that his pet scheme was on the verge of going ahead, and he listed an impressive array of weather organisations and forecasters who were poised to take part.

But, as the Mail reports today, they aren’t. If the report is accurate, all of the forecasters on Mr Harrabin’s list who might reasonably called sceptical about warmist zeal – including the impressive but deeply sceptical Jo Bastardi and Piers Corbyn – are instead turning their fire on the BBC for their pre-determined political views on the topic. Independent forecaster David King is quoted as saying the BBC organisation is “factional”.

Irrespective of what actually happens, it does not take a genius to work out that the project will struggle to persuade anyone that it is objective or valid. The BBC has been outrageously partisan on the subject of the weather so systematically and for so long that the corporation’s credibility in this arena is entirely shot. Andrew Montford’s masterful analysis of the warmist hijacking of the Royal Society emhpasises yet again the key role in the spreading of warmist propaganda played by Roger Harrabin – as does Autonomous Mind here. As you sow, so shall you reap.

And who do we get to advise us?.Craig Bennett from Friends of the Earth!

‘Food security will suffer, insurance premiums go up, a very different country by 2050…a wake up call …serious implications for our livelihoods

‘The BBC bod is clearly alReady persuaded of the need to have a low carbon economy and implement much bolder action …..

‘Does the average person on the street know what the future holds?….How do you persuade politicians to deal with this?’

Of course just what ‘This’ is is still not clear despite the absolute scientific consensus that driving your car to Tescos is killing Africans in climate change caused droughts and wars just as surely as if they were sucking on your exhaust pipe itself.

“Richard Black illustrates why he is not a good journalist…allowing prejudice and bad judgement to influence his reporting. On Twitter he claims people who don’t follow the ‘consensus’ in science damage the planet…meaning the ‘Sceptics’ on AGW except his example would actually denounce the BRIC countries that are being allowed to carry on pumping out CO2 to enable them to industrialize (if the CO2 issue is so important, ie the planet is going to die if we continue producing CO2, how is possible to allow that?).

14:31 UK time, Thursday, 29 December 2011 @BBCRBlack via Twitter ‘Record year’ for ivory seizures – or how beliefs that run counter to science damage the environment http://t.co/Ad80vi3Jhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16353204 “I fear the criminals are winning,” he said. ‘Some environmental campaigners say the decision to allow some southern African countries, whose elephants populations are booming, to sell their stockpiles of ivory has fuelled the illegal trade. Those countries – South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe – however, deny this and argue they should be rewarded for looking after their elephant populations.’

Black also links to one of his stories, sorry, reports, from 2006 about Canada, the evil planet destroying Conservatives, and Kyoto…http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4650878.stm Will Kyoto die at Canadian hands? By Richard Black Environment Correspondent, BBC News website Is Canada’s newly elected Conservative Party now preparing to don the mantle of Darth Vader and emasculate the protocol to the point of impotence?

In this Black claims only the Canadian Conservatives believe the Kyoto Protocol is completely ineffective…..history now tells us most countries think that. What is interesting is that Canada has now pulled out of the climate agreements….it was a big story….but Black ignore’s this event….

Canadian Senate Climate Science and Economics Hearing – 15/12/11 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMQk-q8SpBU&feature=player_embedded#! ….which has prominent and qualified sceptics reporting to the Canadian Senate. I wonder why Black isn’t too keen to have you see this…could it be that the arguments made are compelling and credible whilst pro AGW voices have been shown to be corrupt, inept and unscientific?

A few months before the historic 2008 election, Senator Obamessiah declared His dream of transforming the US into a green energy economy. He promised to use His power to foster the development of green energy companies, reduce our dependency on foreign oil, and create five million green jobs. We all know how well that’s turned out, don’t we?

He poured $4.7 billion down the Green toilet, creating precious few jobs, many of which have since been killed due to bankruptcy. Worse still, we’re more dependent on foreign oil because of His misguided moratorium on drilling in the Gulf, and His refusal to allow not only the Keystone pipeline from Canada. Plus He delayed a deal to allow oil and gas drilling in an Ohio national park. Without lifting a finger, He’s killed nearly a quarter million jobs right there, plus ensured that the US will remain a net importer of oil for the foreseeable future.

He punted on Keystone as a sop to the environmental voters He needs in 2012. By delaying the decision until after the election, He can not only please them, but also doesn’t have to deal with attacks from the non-Left about killing jobs or preventing us from having more domestic production. The Ohio deal is more or less the same thing. But it’s not just a political ploy, as He’s obviously a Watermelon, and always has been. It fits right in with the rest of His extreme-Left mindset.

I can also go on all day about how the ideologically-driven EPA needlessly harms the economy by trying to shut down coal plants, excessively regulating power suppliers which drives up consumer costs causing further pain in difficult times (same thing is happening in Britain), and preventing regions from creating hundreds of thousands of much-needed jobs. Then there’s the fact that subsidizing biofuels (e.g. “dirty corn”) causes feed corn prices to go up, which in turn causes food prices to skyrocket. All of this has gone on under The Obamessiah’s watch, much of it at His direction, and done by people He appointed due to ideology.

We can see, then, how the President’s ideological delusions and His political fecklessness cause serious harm to the US. So how does this apply to the rest of the world? Well, let’s consider the current situation with Iran.

As we all know, there has been an endless series of international talks about dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. With the recent assault on the English British Embassy in Tehran, there has been an increasingly loud call for hardcore sanctions. Specifically, the latest noise is a call for a total embargo on Iranian oil in Europe. Which we also know isn’t likely to happen any time soon. The problem is, countries like Italy and Spain are dragging their feet because they rely a bit too heavily on Iranian oil. People are mumbling about somehow finding other sources for them so they can join the embargo, but who sees that happening any time soon? Where are they going to get it? Venezuela? As if that will make the world a safer place.

Switching sources at the drop of a hat is much easier said than done. And even if Italy, Spain, and Greece somehow manage to find alternative sources within the next few weeks, surely it will be at great cost, which is the absolutely last thing these countries need when they’re already on the brink. They’re already about to bring the Eurozone crashing down like Humpty Dumpty as it is. In short, the lacuna of energy sources has dire consequences.And don’t get me started on how some countries might now be turning away from nuclear energy, which will only add to the problem.

If The Obamessiah wasn’t such a Watermelon, hadn’t appointed Warmists and Green ideologues to key government positions, and wasn’t sucking up to the environmentals for the votes He needs in 2012, it’s entirely possible that the US could have been a viable source. Despite His best efforts, we’ve become a net exporter of fuel. Unfortunately, by fuel I do not mean oil. I do mean petroleum-based products for a variety of uses. The US is still the world’s largest net importer of oil, but we’ve managed to do enough things with it that we can now export more refined products than we bring in. That’s an innovation success story, and I hope it won’t be jeopardized by the Watermelons in Washington.

But what if the US could also become a net exporter of crude? If not for pressure from the Green Lobby over the last couple of decades, and the serious setbacks handed to us by the President, we’d probably be there already. In which case we could be a viable alternative source for Italy, Spain, and Greece, thus enabling a real, crippling embargo on Iran. Sadly, we’re not there, and won’t be any time soon, so international security is seriously damaged because of Watermelon ideology and political fecklessness by the President.

In the end, Warmist ideology harms the country and the world in more ways than we can imagine. You won’t be hearing this viewpoint on the BBC.

Most people here will know exactly what’s coming, and I know this has been covered here many times before, but it’s even more important to call the BBC out on it now because of the looming UN fight over creating a State of Palestine. For the benefit of those who don’t know the BBC’s bias about the “West Bank”, here’s the map they use to explain history to the public:

Notice on the left, the BBC is claiming that there was such a thing as the West Bank (i.e. Palestinian) Territory before the 1967 war. They’ve just erased a chunk of Jordan from history. As we all know, that was part of Jordan at the time, a country at war with Israel. Why else would Israel have invaded? This map indoctrinates the public with PLO propaganda, that Israel invaded sovereign Palestinian territory. Your license fee is being used to promote false history and anti-Israel propaganda.

Reality, on the other hand, is not Israeli propaganda. This map of Jordan – from a non-partisan source – and environs showing the borders during part of the 1967 war in question is fact, not fiction:

Notice the clear border lines of Jordan encompass the area about which the BBC is lying. Yes, I am accusing BBC News Online of telling a lie. I don’t care what some Beeboids personally believe about nasty old Israel’s land grab or the plight of the poor Palestinians or anything else. This is historical fact, and the BBC is lying about it. How can there be an honest Q&A about the topic when one of the answers is a lie? Until they remove that first map and replace it with an honest one, my accusation will stand.

Needless to say, this propaganda demonizes Israel in the minds of the public. Most people are seriously uninformed about the facts of Israel and 1967 and the “Palestinian Territories”. When one tries to explain the facts to get past the emotions, one is then accused of spouting Israeli propaganda. This is how the BBC’s editorial policy and style guide is blatantly biased, causing them to demonize Israel at every opportunity, although the BBC disputes this.It’s impossible to have a civil discussion, national or otherwise, about the situation when the national broadcaster promotes propaganda for one side and demonizes the other. This then promotes anti-Jewish sentiment, but that’s a topic for another time.

“Well, I personally still believe that as a first step we need to be totally separated, and we can contemplate these issues in the future,” he said when asked by The Daily Caller if he could imagine a Jew being elected mayor of the Palestinian city of Ramallah in a future independent Palestinian state. “But after the experience of 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it will be in the best interests of the two peoples to be separated first.”

Actually, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about their desire for a Judenfrei Palestine. He said the same thing a year ago. Not only that, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said the same thing last year, and went further:

Almost no notice was taken of another pre talks decision that the PA chairman revealed, as he announced clearly that if a Palestinian Authority state is created in Judea and Samaria, no Israeli citizen will be allowed to set foot inside.The PA chairman also stated that he would block any Jewish soldiers from serving with an international force stationed on PA-controlled land.

“I will never allow a single Israeli to live among us on Palestinian land,” Abbas declared.

Judenfrei, Judenrein. And the BBC has steadfastly censored all of this. Justin Webb didn’t bring it up to the feckless Lord Levy on Today, it doesn’t feature in any BBC News Online report about Israel or the Palestinians, and it hasn’t been mentioned anywhere else on the BBC. If someone can show me one single example of it, I’ll post it here, shocked but grateful.

Without the truth and all the facts, it’s impossible to have a rational debate and reasonable understanding of the situation. Yet the BBC actively prevents that, promoting propaganda for one side, rewrites history, and censors the Palestinians’ desire for ethnic cleansing.

Sea ice cover in the Arctic in 2011 has passed its annual minimum, reaching the second-lowest level since satellite records began, US scientists say. The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) says the minimum, reached on 9 September, was 4.33 million sq km. That value is 36% lower than the average minimum for 1979-2000.

In ancient Rome, augurs were a special class of priest who foretold the future by examining the flight patterns and sounds of birds. I quote from wiki:

Only some species of birds (aves augurales) could yield valid signs whose meaning would vary according to the species. Among them were ravens, woodpeckers, owls, oxifragae, eagles. Signs from birds were divided into alites, from the flight, and oscines, from the voice. The alites included region of the sky, height and type of flight, behaviour of the bird and place where it would rest. The oscines included the pitch and direction of the sound. Since the observation was complex conflict among signs was not uncommon.

The BBC now has its own very augur in Richard Black, whose brief is a bit wider and adapted to the religion of climate change. His technique is to scour selectively special journals (rather than the sky), and find stories from “researchers” about creatures that are doing strange or different things. He then grandiloquently pronounces what will happen in future: a message from on high.

His topic today is crustaceans in the Palmer basin off the west Antarctic penninsula. Already, Mr Black has augured that this ice is disastrously melting. Now, it seems, “researchers” have found that the area has been invaded by 1.5m king crabs. Woe! Doom! He solemnly intones they are doing what king crabs do – voraciously scoffing other marine creatures – but this, he warns, is a very bad sign. It will cause “profound damage” to the ecosystem because verily, they are nasty invaders that can only survive because of the catastrophic warming.

The snag with augury, of course, was that it was a whole belief system based on a few snippets of truth. Some birds do gather before a storm – but their behaviour is much more complex than that. In exactly the same way, Mr Black – in his haste to spread alarm – ignores the key facts. The Antarctic is not getting significantly warmer.

Another depth plumbed by BBC science reporting. A warmist fanatic – in this case Alun Hubbard, a glaciologist whose self-declared mission is to confirm his fanaticism – has now only to say that he’s “gob-smacked” about the extent of ice loss for it to make a website lead story. Never mind that there is huge controversy about the causes of glacier melt in Greenland, and never mind that many experts suggest it is triggered by nothing more sinister than natural variability. I am not sure under which category of scientific measurement you will find the gob-smacking technique, but clearly for the BBC, any form of panic-mongering will now do. Especially if it’s from one of its regular warmist pimps, as Dr Hubbard clearly is.

This latest exercise in naked partisanship by Richard Black has already been noted by B-BBC readers, but I was away yesterday and could not let it go without further comment. What it shows is that Mr Black is now such a fanatical propagandist that he is avidly snapping up any chance he can to rubbish the views of those who dare to disagree with him. The reality of the “story” – puffed up to be lead item on the warmist section of the BBC website – is that the editor of an alarmist science journal resigned after readers ganged up on him and told him that he had published a report that gave too much credence to evidence from dreaded sceptics which suggests more heat escapes from the earth into space than warmists say.

The guts of the situation – as is explained here – is that the editor appears himself to be a spineless propagandanist who has caved in, despite the powerful evidence contained in the paper. But as pounce_uk has already astutely noted, the key part of Mr Black’s predictably haughty, patronising put down of the offending research is the caption of Dr Roy Spencer, one of the joint authors:

Dr Spencer is a committed Christian as well as a professional scientist.

That, of course, to the BBC is the ultimate insult. He might as well have called him by the n* word. In the BBC lexicon, utter contempt is meant by such a description. To me, this marks a new low – the descent into a vicious, Inquisition-style vendetta against all who dare to challenge the alarmist orthodoxy. The gloves are off.

Here’s John Lloyd, producer of BBC quiz show QI, at a recent sustainable energy awards ceremony. He begins with a couple of gags before giving his audience what it really wants to hear – some classic end-of-civilisation eco-bullshit hyperbole:

“Unless ideas like these get heard, by the twenty-second century there isn’t going to be any one here to hear about them. All these tsunamis and twisters we’re seeing, these volcanoes and floods and earthquakes, they’re not a kind of giant snooze alarm suggesting that it’s nearly time to get up and do something about it. They’re a fire alarm, and it’s not a test.”

So, mankind must adopt sustainable energy to prevent its annihilation due to tsunamis, twisters, volcanoes, floods and earthquakes.

OK, I know the eco-zealots have already made tenuous claim to tornadoes and floods for their cause, but is it the case that tsunamis, volcanoes and earthquakes have now been declared acceptable in the realm of mainstream climate change propaganda? Lloyd is after all the producer of a show based around the theme of obscure facts, so maybe he knows something the rest of us don’t.

Perhaps we really do have to turn off our kettles to prevent tsunamis.

Leftist agitprop fake charity Oxfam has been given the run of the BBC this morning to warn us of apocalyptic increases in food prices of up to 50% (odd nicely even statistic, btw) caused by “climate change” (They’ve obviously abandoned the global warming line formulation and are now using the more sophisticated but equally unfounded “climate change”) Who would have guessed that one of the cures for this was “to invest in small farmers, especially women.”? This dreary nonsense which Oxfam recycles with regularity is never robustly challenged on the BBC, instead like so much of its output it is spewed out as an article of toxic tree-hugging eco-lunatic faith.

Had to laugh at the interview with the Woodland Trust’s Sue Holden on Today this morning (7.42am). Sue was on to spout the usual spiel that we need many more forest, more trees, since this is good for our health apparently. Naturally there was no voice of opposition to Holden’s tree-mania. When it comes to their favourite causes, the BBC are very careful who they put up for interview and who they deny access. In this case, there was consensus that we all love trees. Who would have figured that then?

Further to Robin’s post on the Richard Black led “End is nigh” waffle on the Biodiversity Junket in Japan, I noticed that Today was quick enough to follow on that item with an item on how the Otter has made a remarkable comeback from “the edge of extinction.” All subtle stuff from the State propagandists.

StewGreen November 19, 2018 at 8:44 pm on Start the Week Thread 19 November 2018And since every day is #InternationalSnowFlake Day maybe the BBC should be less like the stereo type of a snowflake...

StewGreen November 19, 2018 at 8:41 pm on Start the Week Thread 19 November 2018BBC Scotland says men should be less man-like on International Men's day https://twitter.com/bbcthesocial/status/1064556658041544704